What do you think of when you hear that an organization is not-for-profit? When opposed to for profits, we are guided to understand not-for-profit to mean for the public good. Growing up, we were taught to think of non-profit work as inherently good and social change as an occupation. So, like millions of non-profit workers, many of us at Both/And began our careers in the non-profit sector in hopes of making a positive difference in the world. This was where society told us we could participate in work that bettered people’s lives and contributed to social change.

And yet, what we found in the sector was something quite different. Early on, we realized that much of the work we were doing was attempting to mitigate the harm of the so-called ‘help’ our organizations were providing. We learned how philanthropy controls what work is done and by whom, how non-profits are primarily focused on their brands and the continuation of the institution, and how white supremacy and capitalist logics are embedded into all of the work with so-called ‘frontline’ communities. Working for our paychecks, we learned lessons about hierarchy and modeling organizations after businesses in a sector that offers cover for abuses because of the ‘good work’ being done. We learned how it is much less about the ‘people we serve’ or actually shifting material conditions. We learned to follow the money to understand the power structures. Later, in our work through Both/And as racial justice consultants, we saw these patterns repeated over and over again and grappled with our complicity in maintaining some of these structures through the cover of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Although we had frameworks on racism and white supremacy to understand much of what was happening around us and our role in it, it wasn’t until we studied works such as The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence that we began to have a systemic analysis of the ways philanthropy and the state use the non-profit sector as a method of social control. Over the last five years, we’ve run workshops on the non-profit industrial complex for funders and non-profit staff. For many it is their first time hearing the term or engaging in a systemic and material critique of their impact. Still, despite witnessing many people learn to do a systemic critique, we’ve seen firsthand that increased awareness does not equate or lead to taking action in non-profits.

Inspired by the work of abolitionist organizers and thinkers on the prison industrial complex and movements in the global South, we identified that one of the largest gaps in our analysis is identifying and experimenting with non-reformist reforms; meaning what are the concrete steps that we can take to chip away at the NPIC, rather than strengthen it? In order to do so, we hope to deepen our analysis alongside others, create spaces for research and study, and convene spaces for organizers to take collective action against the forces of the NPIC.

In the seminal work The Revolution Will Not Be Funded the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC) is defined as “a system of relationships between the State, local or federal governments, the owning classes, foundations, and non-profit/NGO social service and social justice organizations that results in the surveillance, control, derailment, and everyday management of political movements.”

The non-profit industrial complex is a vast web of institutions connected through capital under the guise of public good. These actors include:

• Philanthropy (such as foundations, corporate giving and charitable organizations)

• The owning classes

• State, local, and federal government

• Tax-exempt organizations

  • Non-profits include social work, human services, law, arts, education, homelessness, research, think tanks, sports and recreation, international development, advocacy, hospitals, museums, religious institutions, and more.

• Social venture, social entrepreneurship, social innovation, ‘mission-driven’ for-profit companies, social change/diversity, equity, inclusion consultants

The NPIC controls and derails social change movements by shifting the focus to human service delivery rather than transforming underlying causes of poverty, racism, and exploitation. In doing so, philanthropy and the non-profit sector are able to promote ‘anti-racism’ while keeping the world safe for capitalism and continued exploitation. Ruth Wilson Gilmore reminds us that the wealth accumulated that creates the philanthropic sector is twice stolen: first stolen from the working class through exploitation and then stolen from the public through tax shelters known as foundations. These tax shelters allow the owning classes and government to control their wealth by determining what causes, services, and organizing receives funding, thereby maintaining their power to keep the system that allowed for keeping their accumulation of wealth intact.

This project has three parts: political education and analysis, research and design, and organizing. In the beginning of 2022, we are focused on growing our analysis and doing more research and design. In the later half of the year, we want to launch organizing communities of practice.

Stage 1: Analysis

If you’re curious and want to learn more about the NPIC: join us for our courses designed to grow your analysis of the non-profit industrial complex.

Stage 2: Research & Design

If you’re grounded in an analysis of the NPIC: join in our collaborative research and design process to identify abolitionist reforms that should be the standard.

Stage 3: Organizing

If you believe that the NPIC cannot be reformed and must be dismantled: join a community of practice to organize with others in your sector. All communities of practice will employ an abolitionist praxis, which means those who opt into the group commit to working collectively to challenge reformism and working to dismantle rather than tweak the current system.

Introduction to the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

What are the components of the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC)? Develop an anti-racist, anti-capitalist analysis of what the NPIC is, how it functions, and how it is used to perpetuate and maintain systemic oppression.

Developing an Anti-Colonial Analysis of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

How does the NPIC operate globally and impact you domestically? Build your global analysis of the NPIC by deepening your understanding of land, labor, and capital as tools for the exploited development of oppressed countries.

Labor in the NPIC: What is My Role?

What role do non-profit, foundation, and social service professionals play in the maintenance of the non-profit industrial complex? This offering is for those who want to understand the role they play more deeply and grapple with the impact of their work.

Beyond the NPIC

How can we build something different that doesn’t recreate the current system? In order to do so, we must be able to identify how the NPIC and the diversity, equity, and inclusion sector hold capitalism in place, grow our capacity to challenge reformist thinking, and resist non-profitization in our organization and collectives.

White Women: Foot Soldiers of the NPIC

White Women make up close to 90% of the non-profit sector, continuing the legacy of colonization by carrying out much of the feminized labor that oppresses communities of color. This workshop explores how white women’s internalized dominance through whiteness, internalized oppression through patriarchy, and historical role in colonial structures make them the perfect foot soldiers for the non-profit industrial complex.

Coming soon...

• Co-workers to Co-conspirators: Labor Organizing Skills in the NPIC

• Resisting Non-profitization for Organizations & Collectives

• Burnout, Saviorism, and Capitalist Logics: Exploitation in Non-Profits

• Is It Possible To Be A Professional Organizer?

• Interrogating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the NPIC

• The NPIC & the Carceral State

As facilitators and consultants, we are firmly embedded within the NPIC. We make our living within this structure, advising organizations and foundations, and this often limits the scope of our work. Even offering workshops on the NPIC creates its own set of contradictions: getting paid to teach people within the NPIC about the NPIC monetizes this education and eases the path to co-optation within the sector. Still, as public scholars, we need a platform and funding to host these conversations. As individuals who need to survive within capitalism, we need to charge for our labor. Rather than push away all of these contradictions, we are grappling with them and attempting to be transparent about how we are navigating them.

Both/And is an LLC. We have chosen this tax status because it provides us the greatest flexibility as we transition to become worker-owned. However, no tax status actually fits when it comes to living our values. We have also considered becoming a collectively run non-profit to allow us to keep more money that we can redirect to design, research, organizing and other activities we self-fund. However, if we choose non-profit status, we fear our focus will be overtaken by grant cycles and reporting hamster wheels. And yet, being a ‘for-profit’ company doesn’t allow us to build internal practices that align with how we want to value one another. Our options are severely limited and all of them favor the state controlling the organization of our labor and the labor of our collaborators.